


Magic Lantern

by orrisrootroom



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comedy, Despair, Friendship, Horror, Imagined sexual coersion, Imagined somnophilia, Loneliness, Malicious attempt to induce scrupulosity, Other, Startup/Wantraprenure culture, scrupulosity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-28 01:53:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20770577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orrisrootroom/pseuds/orrisrootroom
Summary: A minor demon attempts to corrupt Aziraphale. Aziraphale considers whether he may have inclinations much darker than a taste for wine, oysters and fraternizing with the enemy. Crowley suggests a different perspective.





	1. Chapter 1

1.

Humans tended to imagine a succubus as looking like a preternaturally beautiful woman. But actually Xosz - who specialized in sexual temptation and supposed she technically counted as succubus - typically manifested as a rather large mosquito. This was mostly a matter of efficiency. Personally and physically tempting humans turned out to be a huge waste of time. You might encourage some momentary selfishness and hypocrisy in the form of a night of passion with a darkly appealing stranger. But all too often your subject would just confess and be forgiven after some very serious marital fighting, and then go forward with new humility and understanding. 

It was far more fun and less work to just nudge your larval adulterers towards each other. It could take humans months or, ugh, even years to build up a properly thick skin of contempt for their partners or sentimental and self pitying conviction that normal considerations of compassion and honesty didn't apply. But the great thing was, you could just leave them to it. They'd create a nice atmosphere of sunsets, champagne, ambiguously extended business trips, sad songs and text messages about petty grievances. And then they'd do all the hard work on their own.

Even better, some tech companies were now tackling the matchmaking problem for humans' own purposes. So recently Xosz has found she barely even needed to bother suggesting ambiguous wordings for dating profiles. This left plenty of time for playing Overwatch, with minimal pauses as needed to fix up her time sheets and secure plausible deniability should Ligur pop up for an unexpected chat. Assuming a male voice two or three times a day to help frustrated young men identify yearnings to live a meaningful life with yearnings to get laid seemed to be quite sufficient. She was actually closing in on the fabled _7 Hour Work Week_, and investigating some ways of using chat bots to streamline temptations which could complete the journey. 

Thus, all in all, Xosz was a huge fan of the early 21st century. And she'd been buzzing around Sillicon Valley (checking out her favorite startup accelerator's latest batch and suggesting to local polyamorists that it was _quite_ a hassle to put everything into in their google calendars), when she discovered the demon Crowley's ring. 

Well, `ring' might have been a misleading word for it. It wasn't a dainty circle of gold or a hefty one of plastic. To human senses, it was unimpressive: a finger sized loop of the nasty hard-to-tear paper they make entry bracelets for nightclubs out of, colored glow-in-the-dark pale green. But Xosz recognized it instantly. She also instantly knew that Lower Management didn't give this caliber gear out to just anyone. If it had been mislaid, this suggested something very interesting indeed, and potentially exploitable, was afoot. Buzzing down towards the ring, she focused her demonic senses and tried to feel traces of whatever senior demon had last touched it. What she found instead made her doubt her own sanity. 

It turned out that, even in her first excitement, Xosz had vastly underestimated the scope of the opportunity she'd stumbled across. If tempting your average human was like, say, breaking into a house, tempting a Principality was like breaking into a Death Star. It was dangerous to attempt and fantastically unlikely to succeed, but the rewards would be correspondingly massive if one did succeed. And the more Xosz cautiously investigated and planned, the more confident she became that she'd discovered an exhaust port which led her past fantastic weaponry and armor right to the thrumming heart of this Death Star. 

2.

The plan was risky, but the rewards were great enough that Xosz cashed in every favor she had Below for the gear she needed. Rather surprisingly, Ligur had agreed to help with getting the jump on Crowley for free (it seemed they had a history, but she'd decided not to push her luck by asking about it). So Xosz soon found herself buzzing into the cracked window of a very expensive London flat, with little more to prepare. She already felt a degree of Properly Demonic aggression and energy which she hadn't directed towards anything but reversing long loosing streaks in gun-based entertainments for many hundred years. But once inside Xosz said a few words under her breath.

Speaking carefully from memory, she wished to be cleansed of pity, fear, weakness , laziness, worldliness and, generally, the desire to chill out and play video games or check her phone rather than working for Hell's Boundless Sovereignty and the Everlasting Harm of Mankind. She solemnly asked to become, if only for the crucial next few minutes, a purer vessel of Hell's Hatred and a more perfect agent for the Reconquest of Heaven. 

These words weren't an ancient occult ritual or intrinsically charged with infernal magic. But they _had_ been generated from a template which a Napa Valley life coach vigorously attributed to Steve Jobs. So Xosz found them sufficiently convincing to ensure that they were distinctly effective.In fact, she briefly wondered if she hadn't rather overshot the mark with this effort at summoning courag--demonic confidence and aggression. But that couldn't be helped now. All that remained was to decide which of her least favorite colleagues to impersonate (details might well get back to Crowley) and then try to turn in a 10x performance ...

3.

With a tiny guilty look up, Aziraphale miracled himself plus two-and-a-half armfuls of takeout and some interesting alcohol through the door to Crowley's flat rather than knocking. Theoretically they were having dinner to discuss the ring he'd lost in America (along with some other details of the Arrangement). But Aziraphale wasn't very worried. Most decently powerful Infernal Artifacts had some ability to slink away from users they found uncongenial. So he'd already encountered this problem 10 or 12 times over the centuries. And the worst outcome so far had involved Crowley complaining for decades about Aziraphale's interest in some undignified local amusements, which he'd discovered while retracing Aziraphale's steps to recover Hell's property. 

It was, admittedly, irritating, that the escaped Artifact had been lost as far away as California. But most demons assigned to Earth had excellent frequent flier plans with the major US airlines. So Aziraphale was fairly confident he could make it up to his friend with something on the order of a weekend's vacation wherever the latter chose. 

Even when Aziraphale noticed a briefcase-sized grey-blue demon perched on Crowley's desk, twining and thrashing thrashing three long arrow-tipped tails around one leg of the desk, he wasn't unduly worried. He could feel that this demon's full powers of occult offence and defense (such as they were) were at the ready. And he did even stop suddenly with a concerned look. But well... the particular flavor of concern suggested someone encountering a small boy wielding a piece of broken glass far more than anything a self-respecting member of the Hellish Host could've enjoyed seeing on the face of an adversary. 

"Oh hello there. I'm terribly sorry if I'm interrupting," Aziraphale said, arranging his parcels fussily on the free part of the desk and considering the exact boundaries of what humans now called `trolling'. He had to admit that something about 6,000 years of coping with Crowley's insecurities on the matter of demonic fearsomeness had created a ...temptation to uncharity when speaking to Crowley's less well-intentioned colleagues. By the time that he finished organizing the wines and turned back to the demon, he could already see that two of her tails were thrashing much more wildly then they had been at first, and one was actually twitching in irritation. 

"Have we met?" he said brightly, "I'm..".

"I know who you are, Principality Aziraphale and Angel of the Eastern Gate!" said the demon with a choking sound and an imperfectly stifled buzz rising into her voice. "And you don't need to know who I am. You need only know that I come bearing news of great importance and peril for you." she continued, apparently trying and failing to get a grip. 

4.

But after regaining her composure, the three tailed demon manifested an image of the missing glow-in-the-dark ring and Aziraphale's heart sank. 

"Do you recognize this?" she said, "Then I'm sure you understand what it would mean for your friend Crowley if were to be returned to the Dark Council as it is. If anything should happen to me during this friendly chat, that's what will happen. Luckily for you, I'm here to return the ring -- for a very small price."

The demon tracked Aziraphale nervously with her eyes while she said this. For all his -in principle- acceptance that violence could `lend weight to a moral argument', Aziraphale felt momentarily offended by her presumption that his first reaction to a blackmail attempt would involve trying to burn parts of someone off with celestial fire. When he made no move to attack, she oozed off the desk and floated cautiously (barely using her small bat's wings) down the corridor towards Crowley's bedroom. She made a gesture for Aziraphale to follow.

Aziraphale had never been in Crowley's (presumably mostly ornamental, no, surely best not to consider that question) bedroom. And he felt an absurd flutter of regret and reluctance to enter it uninvited. When he did, he found a room much like the ones he'd already seen. But the preposterous throne-like chair with gilding and red velvet which Crowley usually kept in his living room had been dragged beside the bed. And Crowley himself lay on top of the bed, with his eyes closed. He was very still, but seemed to be healthy and breathing evenly. His pale skin, haloed in fiery hair stood out vividly against the black-on-black linen, and Aziraphale looked at him with some concern.

"Your friend is fine; he's just sleeping deeply," the hovering demon said, gesturing for Aziraphale to sit in the tall chair. Then she continued with an attack that would have made Aziraphale laugh under less worrying circumstances. 

"You care him a great deal don't you?" she asked in a soft voice, curling her tails very slowly now, as she hovered in mid air. "But that's not all, I think. Don't be surprised that I can tell a lot even without getting through ....all this," she said gesturing with feigned contempt and barely disguised envy at the at the formidable splendor of Aziraphale's outer defenses to their inhuman senses. "You've picked up lots of human mannerisms and body language during your time on earth, so it's possible to learn much by simple observation. Not that he's made that observation, I think. Now I could make him sleep even more deeply, very deeply indeed. He'd be fine. No harm done. He would never know. But, for an hour or two, a less principled person could do anything they wanted."

In his current state of concern, Azriaphale merely raised an eyebrow at this sally. In proper humility to the terror, splendor and mystery of creation, one had to allow that there might be books which could lure a happy person to suicide, colors which could drive a sane person mad and the like. Similarly there might be fiendish diabolical arguments which could tempt someone not yet lost past Hell's spending any further resources on them to sexually assault their best friend. However, if so, Aziraphale felt fairly sure that, ``Look, I've immobilized him for you'' and "Don't be so uptight" weren't those arguments. The whole thing suggested that some kind of infernal filing mistake had swapped information on angels with information on spiders.

Worryingly, however, the demon blackmailer didn't seem to be at all concerned by his non-reaction to this attempt. Instead she was looking at an empty space in the middle of the room, with a limp frozen posture that suggested trying to pull something of great occult weight `up' into the fabric of space and time on Earth.

5.

A sort of pinpoint hole appeared in the middle of the room. Then an icosahedron of wet grey clay emerged, expanding until it was about half a meter across. It hung in the air with its top face tilted at a slight angle, and then floated over to the middle of the room. 

"Crowley's ring is inside the Magic Lantern," said the demon blackmailer, indicating the hovering clay with a wave of her hand, "Or rather, the trigger I'll use to pull the ring up from storage is there. All you have to do to collect is...watch the show."

Aziraphale inspected the icosahedron, which now rotated slowly with an unsettling wobble above him. When he raised a palm experimentally towards it, an orange-red light seeped out, gilding and staining the cold grey walls of Crowley's room. It seemed to float on a vortex of soft wind. He felt, for a moment, as though he was separating from himself. Here he sat in Crowley's throne-like chair. Yet at the same time, he saw the room from a different perspective, and felt as if he were standing up from the chair. He put his hands back down quickly. 

"What is it?" Aziraphale asked. He was, of course, making his own investigation. And he was prepared to take anything she said with more than a few grains of salt. But getting her talking would give him more information to work with. 

"Mostly it's a simulator," the demon said, "It combines your own inclinations with...a little direction from Below."

The Magic Lantern seemed to be, just as the tempter had claimed, an Infernal Artifact which could scan souls and simulate experiences. But something about it suggested a further function. The air current he'd felt gave a clue. Contemporary human culture where Aziraphale was stationed associated sensuality with neon lights, dark red roses or wet glittering black or pink latex etc. But, as the tourist Alighieri had noticed, (Aziraphale had never personally ventured so deep into Occupied Territory), the mystic correspondences which gradually irrupted among the cubicle farms of lower Hell and powered Infernal Artifacts instead tied sensuality to this kind of dizzying, changeable, dangerously elevating soft wind.

"Fine fine", the tempter said "Maybe there's also a little temporary mood assistance built in. Just to help you give things a fair chance, appreciate the possibilities. But think of it as a gift of knowledge. Knowledge of yourself and good and evil. I gather that's the kind of thing you can see the value in."

6.

Not seeing any way out, Aziraphale raised his palms up gently to meet the icosahedron. It now spun much more quickly and seemed like it was melting. A light fog oozed out of it, and the doubled perceptions returned with much greater vigor. Soon he felt much closer to the illusory, standing, body than his real one. Then reality around him winked out. 

Aziraphale's simulated body (he had no control over it at the moment, but uncomfortably suspected that would change) walked over to the bed. He studied Crowley's dear sharp face - his closed eyes looking very naked and his shoulder length coppery hair pooling on the pillow - a little sadly. This was just a nightmare dream, a fancy. It shouldn't change anything. But, perhaps under the influence of the mood which seeped down from the icosahedron, Aziraphale found himself returning to the small demon's crude attack in a soberer spirit.

That (were his feelings returned, had politics allowed) he could have loved Crowley to the full breadth, depth, width and height of romantic love, -with the full complement of loyalty and wonder, fervor and playfulness, tenderness and sensual delight an omnipotent and loving Creator had devised for that state- Aziraphale had long known. But was there something worse in his feelings as well? Why would anyone chose this line of attack? Surely it would have been more natural to appeal to pity for his friend, or indignation on his behalf to spark defiance of God? Was there some hidden weakness at the core of what he had privately come to consider a strength? 

Aziraphale's simulated body sat down gently at the edge of the bed, slightly grazing Crowley's leg. It seemed as if he could instantaneously feel, in every fibre of himself at once, how that limp body sunk and rose along with the shifting springs. Certainly there was something delightful, bewitching, disturbing and strange about the experience. His simulated hand (he still no control over it) reached out to touch Crowley's pale forehead. With a shiver he felt those fingers encounter a texture as light and smooth and livingly resilient as feathers. Then the hand smoothed further down the side of Crowley's head. It was a burst of sadness like a kick to the chest, to find that that bright hair was as soft and lovely to the trembling hand as it had seemed to the longing eye. 

He wished he could ask the real Crowley's forgiveness. But that was absurd; it would be a worse invasion to mention such visions than to enjoy their poisonous sweetness to the full. One just needed to get through it. There was no harm in the simulation in itself. But he had to stay alert. Hell had no interest in his pleasure, melancholy or loss. Novice conjurer though he was, he must keep an eye out for when the really valuable coin would be palmed. Must progress calmly and not be distracted. 

But when his simulated hand suddenly buried all its fingers into the silky warmth below Crowley's sleeping head, Aziraphale almost jolted himself out of contact with the Magic Lantern, from the unsettling sweetness of the thing. What had the tempter said? That one could do many things with this light defenseless creature, weighted down by sleep. What would he do in the simulation? Would he kiss those pale eyelids, trace a hand down that narrow ribcage to find it lukewarm and softly alive under thin cloth? Would he nudge this visionary Crowley's slim legs apart and feel that terribly beloved body open for him helplessly? What else had she said? That no one would know. 

He could have laughed at the implausibility of this claim, though this gruesome mirth felt so unfamiliar that he wondered what effect Hell's pharmaceuticals were having. Surely if he were to do such a thing in reality, the pure conscious selfishness and treachery of the act -the free and knowing rejection of all he knew Her will to be- would destroy and remake him in ways that would be apparent to all...

This thought seemed to trigger something in the simulation. He suddenly found himself back in his real body. His friend still slept peacefully in bed. The demon blackmailer hovered on the other side of the room, her three tails completely limp and still. She was looking down, as if at a clipboard. But there was no clipboard. Instead scrolling letters of fire seemed to hang in mid air.


	2. Chapter 2

6.

"OK, question time," the demon blackmailer said, looking up.

"So, er, how much of what happened in the simulation came from me?" Aziraphale asked. He still thought she wouldn't knowingly give him any useful information, but that might betray something accidentally if encouraged to talk.

"Oh, quite a lot. I don't think I'll give specifics. But what has it been? Say, 4000 years? Well, anyhow, plenty of time for feelings to fester. And, sure, you may be mostly a creature of sweetness and light, but that's no bar to certain impulses. Weren't you just reading about that simpering filial Mademoiselle Vinteuil?"

A simulacrum of the first edition of Proust he'd recently acquired floated in the air between them, at these words. Azraphale found that (despite everything else going on) he was still capable of feeling distinctly grumpy about Hell's agents inspecting -oh, horrid to think, perhaps physically touching and mishandling- his rare books. 

"Now as to... switching teams" the demon continued, (suspiciously) smoothly answering a question Aziraphale hadn't asked, "sure, that's a risk. But then you could be together, with no interference from the guys Upstairs. What else? Crowley might not be happy with your taking certain liberties at first, but have you ever really thought about his situation?" 

"Heaven isn't great, I know. It's not been so long that I can't hum quite a medley from The Sound of Music," the tempter continued, with a gruesomely imitation of camaraderie, "But you have the whole society of angels, who are loving and kind in their own way -- and certainly obedient for all their failings and a certain drift. You may even ... think you still have a relationship with Someone Else."

"And what does he have? Transient contact with humans who can't be told anything that matters and, well, the tender friendship of my kind Below. You probably assumed your situations were basically comparable, because you sometimes have concerns about the management and he proudly told you Hell's not so bad. Do you think he'd court your pity by saying anything else? You can't begin to imagine what it's like being Crowley." 

"But now that you're trying, I'd like you to consider how much your friendship must mean to him. So, you see, you don't need me or any of these parlor tricks. You don't need to make up your mind now. You don't ever need to make your decision explicit, even to yourself. It should now be clear that you'd barely have to raise the issue; you'd only need to subtly suggest a new condition on your friendship and he'd give you anything you want," the demon finished in a whisper.

7.

At this point the Magic Lantern came alive again. Aziraphale noticed that half of it had melted away, so he had good hope that this would be be the end of the ordeal. However he already felt a little nauseous, and his mouth was very dry as he raised his palms to the infernal machine. Somehow he knew this second simulation would be much worse than the previous one. The walls of Crowley's room now glowed sunset colored with the excess of light streaming from the half melted icosahedron. And the heavy mist which seeped down from it abundantly seemed like it was washing through his blood and bones. The sense of simultaneously inhabiting two separate bodies quickly returned. Then the world around him seemed to fold up and vanish.

For a moment he felt weak in the knees, as when a wave lifts someone wading in the ocean up and then puts them down. For he was hit with a rush of simultaneous knowledge and emotion which humans (who can't transfer information instantly) only experience in dreams. Darkness surrounded him. This reminded him of how, in silent movies, a card explaining some plot development would hover for a moment in the darkness between one scene and another. Now Aziraphale didn't see any printed card. But, even without it, he was sickeningly sure what plot development he was supposed to imagine having just taken place. 

Thinking of movies and the tricks used to make them, he briefly hoped the demon blackmailer had overreached with her final demonstration. Likely the Magic Lantern's simulation of his friend awake would be much less credible, and hence much less unsettling, than its simulation of him sleeping had been. But when the curtain of darkness rose he felt much less hopeful.

The flash of shocked hurt and anger in Crowley's fierce eyes as he understood, and the grab for his dark glasses seemed terribly plausible. So too was the long drive which followed, with Crowley's car taking the curves of some dimly imagined English countryside sweetly, and unfamiliar music washing over Aziraphale's ears, as he saw the scene unfold from a disembodied movie camera angle. First crunching distortion flowed over him like a numbing consoling blanket, then there was a moment's scrabble and a switch to something different. "Who loves the sun," a voice sang "who cares that it makes plants grow?" 

The drive seemed to go on for a long, long time. 

But then Aziraphale found himself back in his own simulated body and bookshop. And oh, surely after a ... after a long drive of that terrible kind, his own dear proud Crowley wouldn't return and knock at his door almost shyly. His Crowley wouldn't lock fierce slitted amber eyes with his, and look so sadly and for so long that it seemed as if he were slowly pulling up and disgorging some enormous but invisible hidden treasure from depths below. Nor, thought Azriaphale, beginning to feel definitely sick, would his Crowley end with a weak smile and then lace long slim arms around Aziraphale's neck so gravely and tamely.

The simulation of his old friend leaned in to kiss his brow. And seeing how it coiled itself around him in such a winsome playful way - that it was really doing its very best to please - brought sudden warmth to the underlids of Aziraphale's eyes. He wondered whether he would cry. But, at the same time, a terrible unfamiliar pleasure seemed to spool out from perceiving this meek compliance.

Was this the point of the exercise? Was this the 'gift of self knowledge' the demon had mockingly offered him? He'd loved and desired Crowley for millennia, imagined thousands of things they might be to each other and do with one another. And in all that time (he thought) he'd felt nothing like this soft flat whispery feeling, which wove together desire, injustice, pity and control. But could he be sure? Could he be sure it came from the Infernal Artifact which must -really must, no need to frighten oneself by imagining otherwise- finally be burning itself out above his real body? Or had it always been there, poisonous and hidden, in the background?

8.

This final encounter with the Magic Lantern seemed to go on for a long time, much longer than Aziraphale's later consultation of clocks (or any occult explanation he could discover) would've suggested. When he finally opened his real eyes, an image of the mislaid ring fell from where the Magic Lantern had glowed and melted above him. Then (as promised), in a quick burst of sizzling flame, this image was replaced with a solid object which he caught in his palm and inspected. 

To his relief, it seemed the blackmailing demon had feared personal retribution enough to hand back the genuine article. So the ordeal was over. He turned to her and said as mildly as he could, "Thank you. I presume you can see yourself out?" Smiting was still not on the cards. But in the first misery of recovering from the attack, he did take some satisfaction in the scrabbling indecorous haste of her departure. However, after that it wasn't nice to be alone with his thoughts. He left Crowely with the ring as soon the latter awoke, giving almost no explanation. 

For thousands of years Aziraphale had believed -despite growing evidence to the contrary- the party line that the angels who'd remained loyal were set in the ways of goodness beyond any serious sliding (and demons the reverse). Now he'd simultaneously discovered that he had inclinations seemingly much worse than a taste for old books and oysters - almost a yearning for injustice itself- and his own great capacity for self deception.

In the days that followed he considered the blackmailer's whispered words (about what he might do without ever making his intentions clear, even to himself) and felt lost in a terrible maze. He couldn't stop speaking to his best friend without serious cause (what she'd said about the weight of being his only friend hung uncomfortably in his mind). Yet, after the terrible dimensions the Magic Lantern had illuminated in what had seemed an innocent wistfulness, could he trust himself to be a friend? Surely he shouldn't trust himself to decide such a question. But who could he ask, under the circumstances? 

He considered how long many lost humans maintained a veneer of righteousness while weltering in blood and crime. And he remembered (with new horror) that many of them had put in what must have _felt_ very close to a serious call Upstairs and gotten only what they interpreted as reassurance. He sent Crowley a delaying note. It seemed important but impossible to pick his way forward against the baleful invisible air currents of his own desires. So he put off considering what to do, day by day, until his fear and sorrow were replaced by a special kind of exhaustion. 

For almost the first time in his life, goodness seemed very far away: a tiny sliver of moon visible above breathing darkness in a thicket of brambles. He felt as though, somehow, inside the Lantern he'd lost his end of a little friendly piece of string which had always been tucked somewhere about him and had led him out of many another labyrinth. Now that, it seemed, he was truly alone in the darkness, a new life would have to begin. But he could barely imagine what that life might be.

Thus, even when Aziraphale heard a dear familiar hand on the door of his shop, he didn't stir. He said nothing and barely paid attention until he was shaken roughly out his thoughts by an energetic hand on his lapels. 

9.

Rule number one of being an earthly agent for Hell, Crowley thought, was to (literally and metaphorically) bug your own house before you tried to bug someone else's. And he'd been in this flat for about a decade. So, when he'd woken up from magical sleep to find his best friend looking anxiously into the middle distance and making excuses to leave, his first move had involved scrabbling with a number of physical and occult hidden compartments. The demons who attacked seemed to have been more competent and familiar with earthly tech than he'd usually have expected. But, over the month or so Aziraphale avoided him, Crowley pulled together a fairly detailed external picture of Aziraphale's interactions with the blackmailer.

Based on how quickly Azriaphale had sent a few other demons who'd attempted to tempt or intimidate him packing, Crowley wasn't worried. But Aziraphale had looked quite concerned for a moment when Crowley woke up. And when Crowley finally slotted the last pieces together in his reconstruction of the other demon's visit, he found himself driving over to his friends shop almost before he was aware of making any choices. He should (among other things) certainly try to counteract the type of attack he guessed the blackmailer had tried.

"Angel, please tell me," said Crowley with strategic jauntiness when he'd got Azriaphale's attention, "this isn't all about a Magic Lantern experience. I've always been suspicious of the `just throw a lot of occult fire power at it' school of temptation. But Consumables are pretty much a guaranteed waste of resources even when they work. And I dunno if I can convey the caliber of wanker you have to be to get access to the application materials, much less actually get issued one. So, if Hell's first successful attempt to spook you involves a fucking Lantern Experience, do you know what that means? It means I'll stand corrected by a demon who, I guarantee you, has developed their own personal ranking and tier list for all known Infernal Artifacts and has spent two centuries - minimum `correcting' other demons about it. Do you realize how degrading that is?"

"So I need you to get a grip right now," Crowley continued, putting an arm around Aziraphale's shoulder though the latter just looked down sadly, "For someone so smart, well...First, if I inexplicably wanted to start palling around with other angels, I'd have just as many opportunities as you do. I probably wouldn't drop in on Sandalphon unannounced. But there are plenty of angels who'd be delighted to reach out to the other side, if only in hopes of securing the first defector. I dread the day when Gabriel discovers email. And as for demons, well, I don't go to office parties when I can avoid it. But if you don't believe that the average demon isn't as bad as a very bad human, let's see what we can do about masking your true nature. Then I'll take you on a Canary Wharf pub crawl and you can try to guess demon-or-investment-banker with your human senses alone."

"So any -very hypothetical - loneliness I might feel because I have the good taste to avoid both types of tosser, is my burden to bear. I think you _could_ (even by the lights of your side) impose any conditions with your friendship you want. I mean, no one has to be anyone's friend, right? But I wouldn't have thought you'd be so cocky about what imposing such conditions would buy you. I mean, you may remember my telling the omnipotent Architect of Reality to fuck off* when I didn't fancy the demands for obedience which came with Her love?"

*metaphorically speaking

Aziaraphale winced at certain points of this speech, but seemed to be listening intently. He even seemed to lean into Crowley's arm a little. 

"Second, it sounded like you thought that my colleague's attack was on your Chastity, and the Magic Lantern showed you something important. But, strange as it feels to say it, you're not giving Hell enough credit. I mean, you're literally an angel; it'd be an odd choice to attack via Lust. Plus there's your side's whole line about being `set in the ways of righteousness' beyond the possibility of backsliding. Obviously if that happens to be false (and I don't think I'm the only one in six thousand years to suspect so), it's a massive weakness which invites an attack by Pride (building up the house of cards) or Scrupulosity and Despair (just after knocking it down)." 

"Third, suppose I'm totally wrong about the first two points. What does a Magic Lantern actually show you? A desire and some infernally relevant possibilities for acting on it, right? But you know perfectly well that almost any desire can become a temptation, with enduring desires that clean up nicely (desires for safety, love, respect, confidence in righteousness etc.) generally making a better foundation than sexual ones because they have more staying power."

"Also," Crowley continued, speaking less seriously than he'd just done as his friend seemed to slightly relax, "if mere sexual interest in transgression were worth anything to my side on its own, we both know Ligur and company would've nabbed the corner offices ages ago.

"Fourth," Crowley began to say. But he found that neither his mouth was nor the verbal centers of his human brain or demonic organization would cooperate with the attempt to explain a further fact which it appeared from the blackmailer's line of attack that Aziraphale hadn't known. Thus it took about a two weeks, and a great number of conversations (drunk and sober) about unrelated matters, before a full and joyous understanding was achieved. 

There was also, arguably, a fifth matter which remained to be clarified. About a month later, while draping an arm bearing 2/3rds of a glass of Syrah over Aziraphale's groin with feigned carelessness, Crowley explained that actually playing at being A Very Tame Serpent Indeed sounded hot and he had a number of ideas. It was instantly clear from that angel's stricken expression that he'd made this suggestion too soon. But it wouldn't always be too soon. And, well, Crowley wasn't remotely angelic enough himself to think it wouldn't be a fun use of his skill set to hasten the date. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://proustreader.wordpress.com/tag/mlle-vinteuil/


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